February 3, 2023 - Live From Earth
Thoughts while listening to DJ Gigola’s Fluid Meditations. In a bathtub.
(1)
What is this pressure.
What is this pressure to.
What is this pressure to
strive.
Why am I striving? I strive for things I don’t even want.
Why is it painful to feel average? Who says to run from it, and strive? What is that force?
I am. That’s it.
Here now. That’s all.
I would like you to feel comfortable with me, elevated by our interaction.
Not diminished by it.
(2)
I never questioned my belief that listening to electronic dance music is similar to experiencing a guided meditation. This belief wasn’t formally manifested in a literal way before my sweet ears until DJ Gigola’s Fluid Meditations. The album delivers what it promises—a guided meditation at just the right length, with spoken breathwork instructions, suggestive setting, drops of water, a progressive linear journey, and track titles to set the intent, e.g. ‘Embodiment Practice’ and ‘Gratitude Practice.’
How this album stands out from so many other meditations before it, however, is the higher attentiveness to a beat and how it supports the experience. The drums are lightweight but strong pillars, architecture to grab hold of as you explore a little scary dissociation, a little of your abstract self. They are folded into the dough to keep you present and engaged. It’s an attention to detail that only a DJ could have, this master of using sound to inspire movement and shift in energy.
Perhaps more assertive than an average guided meditation practice, Fluid Meditations delivers moments of dancefloor bliss along with moments of velvety existential melt, which I think keeps it very accessible to those skeptical about this sort of thing. DJ Gigola has thrown down a gauntlet for all of those New Age creators who place stock music in the background of their spoken word as though it were an afterthought to their Big Ideas and Important Words and Lotus Flowers. (My feet are falling asleep just thinking about this.) This musician’s sensitivity to how all the auditory elements interact together in a comprehensive universe, how her words simultaneously have meaning and are objects in sine waves, and how listeners engage in a precious act of trust with a performer that is not guaranteed, elevates this album from the practical to the sublime.
I am questioning why more producers don’t put together their own guided meditation practices. It would be an interesting compilation project (ahem). ☔